Your first job

The first offer feels like the only offer. It is not. Read it properly anyway, because the boat you join green is the boat that writes your first reference, and that reference follows you for two years.

Reading the advert

Adverts carry more than green crew expect. Learn the phrases.

• "Greenies welcome" or "no experience necessary" means exactly that. Apply the same day.
• "Land based experience accepted" means your restaurant, hotel, trade or sport work counts. Give it one line and say what it taught you.
• "Under six months' experience" includes daywork. Two weeks of daywork across three boats is experience. Count it.
• "Experience required" in this industry means yacht experience. Apply if the rest fits and you can be there tomorrow, but do not build your week around it.
• Visa lines are hard lines. "B1/B2 required" means already in your passport. Most boats will not wait while you apply, and very few will sponsor someone green.

Size and programme matter more than the salary line. A 30m boat with five crew teaches you everything at once, because there is nobody else to do it. A 70m boat with twenty crew teaches you one job properly, with a bosun who has the time to show you. Both are good first jobs. Neither is better.

Ask three questions before you accept. How many charter weeks are booked. Where does the boat actually go this season. Is there a yard period. A boat with fourteen charters will flatten you and make you employable by October. A boat in a shipyard all winter gives you regular hours, real systems knowledge and no view at all. Both are worth having. Just know which one you signed for.

From the bridge: When a green candidate asks me about the itinerary and the crew before they ask about the money, I notice. Every time.

References and contracts

Your reference is whoever supervised you. Deck: the bosun or the mate. Interior: the chief stew. Galley: the chef. Ask at the end of a daywork day while you are still standing there and they still remember what you did. Ask two things. Would you write me a few lines, and may I put your number on my CV. Most people say yes. Get it in writing that same day, because crew change boats and phone numbers go dead.

References change as you grow. A year in, the daywork line from a 28m boat drops off and your head of department replaces it. Keep the old ones in a folder anyway. Nobody ever regretted keeping paperwork.

Every seafarer gets a written Seafarer Employment Agreement, the SEA, under MLC 2006, in a language you understand. As of 2026 it has to set out who employs you, where and when it was signed, your capacity, your wages, your leave, your notice period and your repatriation terms. Paid leave is a minimum of 2.5 calendar days for every month worked, and it accrues from day one.

Read four clauses twice. Termination: how much notice, on both sides, and what counts as cause. Medical insurance: what it covers and what it excludes. Repatriation: who buys the flight home and in which circumstances. Notice period: yours as well as theirs. Ask about anything you do not understand before you sign, because nobody has ever thought less of a candidate for asking. This is not legal advice. Check the official page before you book.

Your first month, and getting asked back

The first month is an audition you have already passed once. Do these six things and you will pass it again.

• Learn the crew mess rules on day one. Who sits where, when crew eat, whose mug is whose, and that you wash your own.
• Keep your cabin inspection ready every morning. Bed made, nothing on the floor. Somebody will look.
• Take drills seriously from the first one. Know your muster station and your duty before anyone asks you.
• Deck crew: start your training record book in week one, not month six.
• Open a bank account that works across borders and accepts the currency you are paid in. Do it before you need it.
• Ask for a sea service testimonial when you leave, and keep every one you are given, in the same folio as your certificates. Two years on, that folder is your career.

Being asked back is simpler than people make it. Listen to the instruction and carry it out the way it was given, not the way you would have done it. When you finish, go and find the next task instead of your phone. Help the person next to you before they ask. Be first to start the evening clean up. Do not complain where anyone can hear you, because complaining tells the mate you will not last the season, and the mate is the one who decides whether your name comes up in October.